One step at a time.

Every so often I get struck with inspiration for a new direction, challenge or dimension for my life, and being a generally impatient character I want that change to be activated NOW!

The last few years of yoga practice have taught me one thing (even if I haven’t acquired non-conceptual understanding of the lesson yet): change takes time, determination, and usually sweat.  Sometimes, change requires a change in method too!  In the Bikram sequence of yoga, I have always struggled with fixed firm pose, usually can’t get anywhere near to the posture and change has not been forthcoming.  Recently, however, with some improved geographical understanding of where my hips and my heels are situated, things are improving little by little.

There are some parallels here, for me to learn from today.  If I keep bashing my head against the wall of new directions, all I’ll get is a headache.  Instead, I’ll calmly examine the nature of the wall, and work out which of the “over, under or through” approaches to take.

F^*&ed off with Facebook

I am back to the blog in an earnest attempt to get rid of the insane habit of letting friends and family know how I am by updating my status on Facebook.  It is, however, a sad indicator of our times that a blog is tool of choice for this operation.For this week, tasks to accomplish (in no special order of importance) include: recover from OFSTED; organise Florence’s 5th birthday party; bake & ice 2 birthday cakes; sort out Christmas cards and presents; get to the end of term with all jobs done; maintain semblance of normality whilst quietly having collapse of self-esteem from taking on too much.More news soonest, if I don’t hibernate first.

A teacher’s springtime…

This is the time of year we earn our summer holidays – eek lots to do, lots of deadlines and external exam stuff.
Roll on Friday 13th July, a very lucky date.

If someone rants inanely in cyberspace, does it make a noise?

When you arrive at the WordPress homepage, there is a figure telling you how many blogs have been started. It’s 873,469 today. Since I started my blog, I notice that nearly 100,000 more people have started a blog too. Of course there may be people with more than one blog but this begs the question: what the £@*& are we all saying?

One of my nearest and dearest commented that my last blog posting was virtually incomprehensible. I’m sure mine wasn’t the only one like that. Hopefully if we are colonised by an alien culture they won’t use blogs as the greatest measure of our intellectual worth.

Maybe this is a bit cynical – I just write a blog cos it’s easy. It’s nice to think that some prolific literary greats would have blogged if they could have availed themselves of the facility. Pepys via blog? Woolf? Shakespeare? Is it all bloglocks?

Delving into the appendix

When I feel good, I like to try a new book. I am building up to reading Irene Nemirovsky’s Suite Francaise in French. At the moment however, I am reading the appendices to The Lord of the Rings – hopefully the blue spell won’t last long enough to tackle the actual story.
The appendices are a good thing, as you can get close enough to the characters and the plot without actually having to connect with the whole story proper. No such luck with the lovely Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh – have lost count of how many times I’ve read this, or with Memoirs of a Geisha. I should be more adventurous but there is nothing more reassuring than renewing a friendship with a fictional character. Over time your relationship to them and opinion changes depending on your own circumstances. My mother succinctly summed this up vis a vis her own relationship with Mrs Bennett from Pride and Prejudice: “I really found her odious as a teenager but as I grew up and had a daughter of my own I though what else could she do for the best for her girls in that era.” This shows the fluidity of our own opinions, while the essence of our souls remains the same. To quote my Mum again – “No matter how many times I read it, I still thought Madame Bovary was a silly bitch!”